Once Out Of The Well ...

writers_reign

This was billed as a comedy-drama but the laughter that filled the NFT at a recent showing was less an appreciation of any humorous content in the script than a reaction to the risible construction. Time after time director Reed and screenrights Launder and Gilliat rework the classic anecdote of the penny dreadful writer who, in an effort to extract a rise from his editor, left his hero stranded in a deep well full of deadly snakes and refused to write the next episode til he got a rise; finally, having exhausted all other avenues the editor caved in and the hack got his rise. The next episode began 'Once out of the well ...'. Consider: Within minutes of the opening Margaret Lockwood finds herself in a concentration camp where she is befriended by fellow prisoner Paul Henreid. He intimates that he knew one of the guards some years ago and said guard will help them escape. Cut to a searchlight raking the camp. A hand pulls a lever, the light is diminished for ten seconds. The light goes back on and sweeps the camp again, disclosing a hole in the barbed wire. Cut to: A boat en route to England with Lockwood and Henreid on board. No reference to any possible chase, cross-country flight, locating a boat etc. In the next shot they are coming ashore in full daylight on a beach crowded with holiday makers. Maybe in 1940 cinema-goers didn't ask awkward questions. Just as well. More? Okay. Much later - by now Lockwood and her vitally-important scientist father have been kidnapped by German agents in England and taken to Berlin and British agent Rex Harrison, masquerading as a high-ranking Nazi, is contriving to get them back to England. Unknown to him he has been rumbled by none other than Henreid, long since revealed as a Nazi himself. Two English travellers, Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, overhear Henreid talking on the telephone to his superiors and arranging to have Harrison, Lockwood and her father arrested at Munich. They contrive to warn Harrison and then THIS happens: Harrison returns to his compartment where Henreid reveals that the jig is up and calls for the two German guards who are accompanying them to come and arrest Harrison. Who should appear in the uniform of the two guards but Radford and Wayne, the two least likely middle-aged Englishmen to overpower two fully armed German officers. Again, no mention of HOW they did it, on a crowded train yet and NO ONE noticed. It's like this from start to finish plus it's also one of those films in which ordinary foreigners speak not only accent-free English but also use English constructions, so that Lockwood is Czeckoslovakian only because the script SAYS she is. One minute Harrison is in London thinking of a plan to get Lockwood out of Germany, the next he is in Berlin in full German army uniform masquerading as a high official. If you can forget all these glaring errors it's an enjoyable romp - and do try not to laugh at the station sign reading Munchen West - with a cast of well known English actors of the time, Felix Aylmer, Raymond Huntley, etc. Any similarity to The Lady Vanishes has to be intentional and Launder and Gilliat, who wrote TLV get extra mileage out of the Radford-Wayne characters who first appeared in TLV. In 1940 this was no doubt gripping; in 2006 ...

score 6/10

writers_reign 27 August 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1459497/